A man who dug a mountain for the whole prime time of his life to make a road for the people of his village in India went to the annals of history, inspiring generations and underlining the simple fact that determination is the key to moving mountains.
Here in the Sultanate of Oman, media-shy Saeed bin Salem al Muqeemi of Al Oud in Wadi Bani Khalid worked with complete determination to facilitate easy access to the next village and save hours of travel time.
Al Oud in Wadi Bani Khalid, a wilayat in North Al Sharqiyah Governorate, is surrounded by mountains. The people here had to travel 3.5 hours to reach the next village Halut in the mountainous Niyabat Tiwi of South Al Sharqiyah Governorate.
The hard work of Al Muqeemi reduced the travel time to and from Halut by 3 hours. With sheer dint of grit and determination, he converted the passage between the two villages into easy access. He tirelessly supervised the construction of the road until its completion.
Saeed brought an excavator and took it upon himself to provide relief to people in the mountains by shortening the distance between the two villages. After several months of hard work fuelled by determination, he successfully constructed a link road connecting the two villages in two separate governorates.
"It was not an easy task to construct a road. I really had to spend a considerable amount of my time every day and get behind the excavator control to supervise the work. My typical day at the construction site began at 5 am and sometimes even before so that I could achieve the target of 7 to 8 kilometres of road in the desired time," a jubilant Saeed said.
Last week, after the road connecting the two villages was opened to the public, it shortened the travel time from 3.5 hours to just 30 minutes, with the travel distance of 200 km reduced to less than 8 km.
When he decided to construct a road through the mountain, people questioned his sanity by saying, "Had there been a possibility, the road would have been made much earlier."
However, some people appreciated his decision and stood by him for the initiative and offered all possible support in the form of money, efforts and extended moral support, according to Al Muqeemi.
Finding sufficient funds to support the project was a big question, and that paused his dreams of the road. Saeed was awarded a grant as part of the Sultan Qaboos Award for Voluntary Work last year.
"I bought an excavator with that money, and that was the beginning on July 1, 2022, and it was the day we embarked upon the strenuous task of breaking the mountains that blocked us from connecting," Saeed marked with a smile.
"It was a challenging task, and we were required to dig deeper into the side of the mountain and had to expect that anything could go wrong any time during the construction, such as a rock falling onto workers below and other threats, which we overcame with luck and determination," Saeed adds.
He advised them to drill and blast that part of the mountain after surveying and mapping the road. Later, roads are cut into the mountainside by digging deep into it after making a trace-cut by tracing the line. Later, the earthwork began with the excavator, which operated through the soil and soft rocks. Months long mountain cutting, drilling, blasting and clearing rock, which was, are all part of the job, the road was ready to welcome commuters on February 02.
"The pleasure of seeing villagers from both sides happy and easily travelling is inexplicable. But I'm happier to see that our efforts will definitely inspire someone somewhere, and the concept of volunteerism will inspire both citizens and residents," said Saeed.
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